[I’ve been working for several years on a large linoleum
blockprint that traces the history of the use of Congolese uranium in
the Manhattan project. ]
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NUCLEAR HISTORY IN LUBUMBASHI  
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Roger Peet
July 1, 2023
Justseeds [[link removed]]

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_ I’ve been working for several years on a large linoleum
blockprint that traces the history of the use of Congolese uranium in
the Manhattan project. _

, Courtesy of Roger Peet

 

I spent three weeks in May in Lubumbashi, the second largest city in
DR Congo. The city was founded in 1910 as a commercial garrison for
the nearby Etoile du Congo copper mine and the huge Union Minière
copper smelter, whose smokestack still dominates the skyline. The
surrounding region contains one of the most prolific mineral deposits
on the planet, in an arc that stretches from the city of Kolwezi
through Lubumbashi and south into Zambia. That deposit, known as the
Copperbelt, continues to produce a significant percentage of the
world’s copper, cobalt, manganese, and lithium, but I was in Congo
to talk about another metal found in the copperbelt: uranium.

I’ve been working for several years on a large linoleum blockprint
that traces the history of the use of Congolese uranium in the
Manhattan project. A single mine located about 80km to the northeast
of Lubumbashi produced the majority of the uranium ore used to develop
the first atomic weapons, and then to build thousands more- in fact
that mine was the major source of uranium for America’s weapons
factories for nearly fifteen years. It is the most highly concentrated
deposit of uranium ever found on the planet, and its name is
Shinkolobwe.

I brought the big linocut map that I made to Lubumbashi and used it,
and the prints made from it, as the basis for six presentations to
people around the city and beyond over the course of three weeks. I
gave talks at Picha Art Center (my gracious hosts), Centre Arrupe, the
University Of Lubumbashi and the National Atomic Energy Commission,
and did workshops with the students of the Ecole Superieure des Arts
et Metiers and with the women of Makwacha Village just outside of the
city limits.

One striking thing to note about these presentations: in all cases,
members of all audiences had heard of the mine, and were aware that
its products had been used to develop the first atomic weapons. This
is in striking contrast to audiences in the US, who have generally
never heard the word Shinkolobwe and assume that all that uranium came
from Canada or the Southwest. Some of it did- but Shinkolobwe produced
more than 50% of all the uranium used in weapons development in the
USA between 1943 and 1958. Audiences in Congo were generally shocked
to learn that the waste products of the industrial processing of
Shinkolobwe ore are still causing public health problems and extreme
environmental contamination at sites across the USA.

Something shared by audiences in Congo and the USA is the general lack
of knowledge of what happened to the people who dug those ores.
Working by hand with rough tools deep inside the most highly
concentrated uranium ore-body on the planet certainly produced some
health consequences for miners, and the health of those miners was
part of very early studies on the effects of uranium ore exposure- but
those studies had to fulfill themselves in other mining centers in
Gabon and Niger after the war, because the strict regime of secrecy
surrounding Shinkolobwe precluded too many questions being asked.

The health of Congo’s mineworkers has long been ignored by a world
hungry for minerals, and in the current rush for battery metals for
the so-called “Green Transition”, the rates of exposure to toxic
metals
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some of the poorest and most highly exploited people on the planet are
off the charts. The first ever study
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the health consequences of exposure to cobalt was released in 2020,
based on research conducted in Congolese mineworker communities near
Lubumbashi. The story of the miners at Shinkolobwe, however, remains
lost, still trapped in the weird historical momentum of that regime of
secrecy established by the Manhattan project in the 1940’s, when the
mine’s name was stricken from maps and all mention of it in the
press was forbidden.

This project is a work of historical memory, intended to create
connections within the worldwide community of people affected by the
mining and use of Shinkolobwe’s ore- which, at the end of the day,
is all of us.

_REPOSTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.  PHOTOS COURTESY OF ROGER
PEET._

ROGER PEET is an artist, printmaker, muralist etc. etc. living in
Portland, Oregon. His work tends to focus on civilized bad ideas,
predator-prey relationships, and the contemporary crises of
biodiversity and Capitalism and what can and can't be done about them.
He coordinates the national Endangered Species Mural Project, and
helps to run the cooperative Flight 64 print studio in Portland. He
collaborates with artists, activists and scientists globally and
locally in the service of a more generous and a wilder world. Get
t-shirts of some designs here:
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JUSTSEEDS [[link removed]] Artists’ Cooperative is a
decentralized network of 41 artists committed to social,
environmental, and political engagement.

With members working from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, Justseeds
operates both as a unified collaboration of similarly minded
printmakers and as a loose collection of creative individuals with
unique viewpoints and working methods. We believe in the
transformative power of personal expression in concert with collective
action. To this end, we produce collective portfolios, contribute
graphics to grassroots struggles for justice, work collaboratively
both in- and outside the co-op, build large sculptural installations
in galleries, and wheatpaste on the streets—all while offering each
other daily support as allies and friends.

* nuclear weapons
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* Uranium
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* mining
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* Health Care
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* environment
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* Climate
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* Democratic Republic of Congo
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